3月，美国陆军工程师和美国陆军工程兵团第54局长托德·塞蒙特中将在自2016年以来担任高调职位后，已准备好退休。然后，Covid-19-19的全部影响开始焦点。
“I was going to retire on a Thursday. It was Tuesday morning of that week when the White House called the Secretary of Defense and said, ‘Hey, we want to keep LTG Semonite on indefinitely,’ ” says Semonite, who recently joined WSP as its president of the federal programs business. “We were very honored to stay on board for another four and a half months and continued to get the COVID facilities completed.”
在Semonite的指挥下，USACE立即开始评估现场可能用作COVID-19患者的替代护理设施（ACF）。在大流行的头几个月中，军团最终在州的62个不同的设施和15,074张床上进行了处理或协助。FEMA资助了紧急情况。最初的USACE计划是准备处理医院溢出的设施。
纽约州长安德鲁·库莫（Andrew Cuomo）在纽约雅各布·贾维茨（Jacob Javits）中心要求唐纳德·特朗普（Donald Trump）总统获得第一届ACF。Semonite飞往与Cuomo会面并讨论任务的范围：使用可以转换为ACFS的现有设施，以进行共证和非旋转用途。Javits中心在评估其适合患者护理的两周内正在运营。
塞蒙特说：“我四年来我为之骄傲的最大事情之一是，当出现问题时，您不会等待手机响起：要领先。”
USACE tasked the leadership of the Corps’ Huntsville Medical Center of Expertise in coming up with options for the ACFs. Two were spaces that could handle COVID patients and two were for non-COVID patients. The options expanded from convention centers such as the Javits Center and sport arenas to small facilities such as hotel rooms and dormitories. As contracts were awarded and facilities were built or reconfigured, Semonite and his team traveled to other locales to meet with officials, assess their needs and share recommendations. Closed medical facilities that could be brought back into service and small hotels were ideal sites.
The cost of converting the 64 ACFs that USACE delivered was $1.8 billion, 75% of which was covered by FEMA’s budget and the remaining 25% was paid by the state and local authorities. Many contractors worked with mechanical trade contractors to install HVAC and forced air systems to allow negative air pressure and piped-in oxygen to treat patients with advanced COVID-19 symptoms.
On March 29, at the White House, Trump said, “I’d like to congratulate the Army Corps of Engineers and FEMA and everybody else in the federal government, working with state government, on the incredible job that the Army Corps and FEMA did on building the hospital in New York at the Javits Center. I want to thank, in particular, General Semonite.”
塞蒙特（Semonite）于9月退休，于2021年1月被任命为WSP美国联邦计划部门的总裁。
